


Our Town

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [52]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Attempted Murder, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8193202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: She would avoid chicken for a while.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 2.24 "Our Town"  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

There had been a moment, before Mulder had charged in with his gun waving like some kind of Wild West hero, that she had resigned herself to her fate. The heat of the bonfire was blistering on the side of her face and her knees were damp and chilled by the ground. It was supposed to be spring, but the night was still cold. Something about the mountains, maybe, as worn down as they were. They seemed to trap the cold and the fog. She had never spent much time in the country. She hoped Mulder would take her body back to the coast. 

She was going to die so that others might live. As a believer in Christ, she had to see some sort of strange beauty in that. She had no delusions of godhood or sainthood, but at least there was a purpose to her death, however grisly and twisted. She would die and they would simmer her bones in the big pot and feast on her flesh and find some grim approximation of life eternal. She would go on in some way, nourishing the bodies of others. If Mulder didn't find her in time, they would tip her remains into the river. She imagined him sifting the fragments of her out of the silt. He would not let her lie there long. He would arrest the entire town. The factory would lie empty. She hoped someone would feed the chickens. 

She knelt, her head gripped by the contraption they had made, panting against the tape over her mouth. Mulder. There were so many things she would never tell him now. At least she couldn't scream. She would not close her eyes. She waited for the heavy edge of the ax. She hoped it was sharp.

And then, fumbling through the dark, Mulder, the edges of his coat wild in the breeze from the speed of his progress across the dark and bumpy field. Mulder, felling her potential murderer with a well-timed shot. He helped her to her feet as the townspeople fled, scattering like birds in the face of a fox. She let him push the hair back out of her face. His hands were gentle. His fingers trembled against her skin, but she was trembling too. They shivered together in the field. Idly, she diagnosed them both with shock. They would need to get warm; they would need to breathe deeply and slowly. She might let her fingers lay over his wrist to check his pulse. 

He unmasked the man who had hefted her death on a wooden shaft: the sheriff. Irony twanged through her weary body, a familiar sour pang. How could there be justice in a world where the law made its own rules? She felt the strain in her shoulders and remembered her wrists were still bound.

"Mulder," she said, "my hands." He looked down, alarm in his eyes, and then took out his pocket knife and slashed the bonds. His thumbs rubbed the red places where the rope had been. She breathed in and out, watching the firelight reflected in the depths of his eyes. It was meditative somehow, hypnotic; she could feel her pulse slowing as she gazed at him. 

"What do you want to do, Scully?" he murmured. 

She cast a glance out over the field. "I would say we should call local law enforcement, but there doesn't seem to be much of that anymore."

He huffed, half a laugh, and touched her under the chin with one knuckle, gently tilting her face to the light. Whatever he saw, he seemed satisfied. 

"Scully, I think I'm a bad influence on you."

"I know you are," she said, and fumbled her phone out of her pocket. She would find someone to call, someone to pick up the pieces and put them together in a way that would satisfy the authorities. They had done enough in this town. She could still feel the rough grain of the wood against her cheek, the pressure of the metal bands around her head. There was no distance between them and the crime. Someone else would have to find a perspective on the case. Mulder stood between her and the fire as she touched the lighted buttons of her phone, but the warmth of him was shelter enough. He brushed his fingertips over her cheek once more, picking off a splinter, and she sighed, pressing the phone into her ear. 

A few more days in the motel. A few more days of fog, of photographing the polished bones, of reciting the details of her experience. They would do it together, and then they would leave, and her narrow escape would be the width of a file folder, resting in the drawer with all the rest. 

She would avoid chicken for a while, she thought. She imagined Mulder would too.


End file.
